Education Movements, Power and Identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

In the process of postwar rebuilding of a multi-ethnic state, where the principle issues of identity and fear of assimilation may be at the forefront of the discussion, education emerges as one of the central issues for all ethnic groups that participate in the make-up of the state. Education is recognized as a key institution in the apparatus of the modern nation-state (Durkheim 1956). For Durkheim (1956), it is education that plays the pivotal role in perpetuating and buttressing the societal homogeneity by “fixing in the child from the beginning the essential similarities that collective life demands”. However, the situation in the multi-ethnic state is more complex. The issue of education and the influence over it becomes essential for the recognition of groups and their survival in terms of identity and participation in the control and redistribution of knowledge and power at the state’s core.